Pictures, Yay!

I've got a couple of posts' worth of pictures, so bear with me (and the 3 or 4 posts that I'm going to be making in rapid succession).

First, The garden through time:

April 4, 2009. 2.5 weeks after planting everything, and having the front row damaged by a freak hail storm in late March.

May 22, 2009. The pepper in the back is dead, the pepper in the front ain't doin' too hot. The Brandywine is the tallest, with the Krim a close second. The Eggplant looks all squat and funny. I still have strawberry plants in the black planter.

June 6, 2009. Only a two week difference from the picture above, and yet the Brandywine and Krim have grown about 1.5'. The eggplant has also grown some. I also had ripped out the strawberries and replaced them with Delicata and Butternut seeds. I also had put up the bird netting just before this picture as well.

July 18, 2009. It was too depressing to take photos of the plants before I pruned them, so I just didn't. I chopped the Brandywine in half and most of the Krim--the long branches are from the Krim, they have tomatoes on them still so I left them, but when I harvest the tomatoes, I'll cut the branches down. The Krim branches that remain show that the plant was about 2' taller than in the previous photo. The Roma and Viva Italia (on the right) have filled out quite a bit from earlier, and the eggplant practically requires a tomato cage of its own. The delicata and butternut have really taken off on the left side of the picture. Oh, and you can barely make out the eggplant itself--it's the white thing above the yellow leaf on the left plant in the garden.

lack of posting, again

Sorry for the lack of posting--we were on Vacation. Again. This time to the east coast, where I actually took some pictures of flowers and gardens and what have you at Mount Vernon, so I will probably post them here. eventually.

The neighborlady who watched the cats and garden was paid in copious amounts of tomatoes this time around (okay, maybe not copious, but at least 10 tomatoes since that's how many were ripe the day we left, plus whatever ripened while we were gone).

The garden is looking pretty pitiful.

The Brandywine is miserable, and I'll be pruning it back this weekend since the ONE tomato it had on it is now gone (I'm hoping it ripened and Cammie got it, and not the squirrels).

The Krim is starting to feel the heat, but still looks kinda decent, though leggy, it will also be pruned back.

The other three tomatoes are doing fine I guess. The eggplant and winter squash plants are actually thriving. The pepper plants are all keeping on, keeping on.

All the flowering plants look like crap except for the ones Bob gave me, the two Turk's caps I bought, and the coral honeysuckle plant. Of course the bat-face cuphea came back pretty well after watering it yesterday, and I think the bulbine plants and lantana plants will pull through as well. The passion flower was in dire need of water, but perked up after it got some.

It of course looks like crap right now because of the caterpillars. :) I don't know if it bloomed or not, but it does have cute little spikey caterpillars all over it.

Updates

Yeah yeah, I know, I really need to post pictures...sigh.

Anyhow, as I'm sure everyone's been reading on all the other Austin garden blogs, the hot weather has hit. We've had multiple days in a row with 100+ temps...which isn't good for the garden.

That hot of temperatures tends to make everything slightly crispy.

The heirloom tomato plants started showing some crispy fried leaves so I've upped my watering from 2x a week to more like every day...though I do have to be careful because I noticed some blossom end rot problems on the Romas. Silly temperamental tomato plants.

The Brandywine tomato plant does not look well. I can't really figure out the problem--the leaves turn yellow, then will get some crispy spots, but they never drop off. I think it's a water problem at this point, but it even had problems back in the day that I don't think were related to water...unless it was getting too much water. Sadly, I don't think the plant will make it to the fall (I probably should take Bonnie's suggestion and prune it to see if that would help). Also, there is one lone tomato on the plant (it set during our last vacation--which was the last time we had temps that were below 75 for more than 2 hours...it just happened that that time frame was during some hellacious storm, or so I've gathered from the Austin Garden Blogs).

I've pulled another Viva Italia tomato (and there's another ripening), as well as 4 more Krims--I've started pulling them off the vine when they look pink and then let them ripen to the purple color inside the house. I gave 2 of the Krims to one of my coworkers (in exchange for some squash from his garden). I also learned that Shawn doesn't like them much --not because they're tomatoes, but because when you cut them open, the goo around the seeds is dark green/black and he thinks it looks like the tomato is rotten...so I have to make sure to scrape out all the seeds first and then add them to our sauces.

The Delicata and Butternut plants took off while we were on vacation, and other than getting a little wilty during the heat of the day, they're doing fine--and are about to bloom.

I noticed some tiny Thai Chili Peppers on the pepper plant out front, so it looks like we'll be able to have our spicy breakfast potatoes again, yummy!

I'm still pulling some worms off of the tomato plants...they look to be Yellowstriped Armyworms, but the damage is pretty minimal--enough to be noticeable, but not enough to do anything other than pick them off the plants and throw them in the neighbor's yard.

Tomatoes

Sorry for the lack of blogging--I've been out of town for the last week. While I was gone, my neighbor took care of the garden and the cats...though I don't know how much she really had to take care of the garden--most of the time the garden does fine with a good soaking on the weekend and a good soaking once in the middle of the week and it rained 1.5" on Thursday night I guess it was (I was still gone, so I'm going off of what my coworkers told me).

Anyhow, right before leaving, we had a Roma tomato ripen up and it looked like 3 of the Black Krims would be ripe within a few days, so I told the neighbor to take them and enjoy them. I think she took two of the Krims, and the Roma, but the third Krim ended up rotting on the vine (I pulled it off when we got back on Saturday).

When I had a chance to check the garden on Saturday morning, I noticed that something started eating holes in the eggplant (like the actual fruit, well, the leaves too, but it's a healthy plant, so it was the fruit I was concerned about) so I pulled the worm off (dark gray with light gray running stripes). I also pulled 5 ripe Viva Italia tomatoes off the plant, with 3 more close to being ripe). I pulled all the worm eaten green tomatoes off the plants (mosly on the BHN for some reason), and was surprised at how well the winter squash did with minimal watering (or maybe the neighbor watered more frequently than I told her to).

I have noticed that the Krims are starting to have splitting problems (Annie had warned me of such), so I'm trying to water the other plants and let the Krim plant stay dry, but I don't know how well that's going...guess I'll find out when the other two close to being ripe tomatoes ripen.

Bird Netting

Today I put some bird netting (technically it's labeled as Deer Netting...but it's the same as the bird netting only it comes in 7' x 100' rolls instead of 14' x 14') around the garden to attempt to protect the ripening tomatoes from the squirrels/raccoons/random neighbors who are stealing my ripened tomatoes. So, we'll see how this works.

For an update on all the plants:
Viva Italia Tomato: Covered in tomatoes. Not very big (the plant), not many non-fruiting branches (so it looks a little airy). One ripened tomato thus far. One ripened tomato taken by wildlife. No longer flowering

Roma Tomato: Has a few tomatoes. This one was one that was damaged by the hail. One ripened tomato thus far. And it was good. it was diced and put in spaghetti sauce. Still flowering, though barely. One tomato currently ripening. This is why I put out the bird netting--I want my tomatoes, dammit.

Corno di Toro Pepper: piddly. But I did Miracle-Gro all the plants this weekend, so maybe it will get a move on.

BHN tomato: 2 tomatoes total. This one was one that was damaged by the hail. One tomato ripened thus far. One ripened tomato taken by wildlife. Currently flowering prolifically.

Cloud 9 Eggplant: 1 eggplant thus far (about 2" big). This plant has really taken off in recent weeks and is about to flower again.

Rococo Pepper: Dead. D-E-D, dead. I ripped out--roots looked fine, so I assume it was something I did (or some act of God--it did seem to go downhill very quickly when I watered the plants and then it rained 3"). I replaced it with some watermelon seeds. Which just came up so hopefully that will have better luck.

Black Krim Tomato: about 4.5' tall I would guesstimate. Has quite a few tomatoes on it--enough that even if they all are taken by wildlife this year, I will plant one again next year. No ripened tomatoes yet.

Brandywine Tomato: about 6' tall I would guesstimate. Has NO tomatoes on it. Pssh. Still flowering prolifically. Which is only stupid because it won't set fruit with temps this hot. It better do well in the fall, otherwise I'm writing this breed off.

Cayenne Pepper: It's doing alright. Hasn't flowered any since I pulled all the peppers off. but still, 3 peppers are worth it.

Thai Chili Pepper: This is a plant that I had planted last year and at the end of the season I cut the plants down instead of ripping them out--I thought they would die over the winter. Instead, all 3 plants came back--one was killed by the guys doing our roof though, and another just never seemed to do well (plus i never watered it enough). But the third one is doing very well. I think it's about to bloom too (fingers crossed).

Other things I did today: I ripped out the strawberry plants and put them in the composter, and then planted one compact Butternut and one compact Delicata squash seed in thier place. I also finally ripped out the oregano plant in the planter and am currently drying the parts that were green. I spread the remainder of my lettuce leaf basil plants in its place (but I'm guessing the basil seeds are no longer good--they are 3 years old I think.) If nothing is coming up by the middle of June, then I'll probably plant something else in there, but I don't know what...

Rain

It rained. Again. Again it was a day after I watered the garden. You'd think I'd learn by now that I need to actually look at the weather forecast instead of just watering everything willy-nilly.


And how fitting is it that the Purple Heart started blooming the day before Memorial Day?


And just 'cuz I like this photo (An inchworm on a sunflower):

Rain

Rain amounts last weekend (May 16/17) were in the 1" range (some parts of Austin got 2"). The only sucky part was that I had just watered all the plants the day before.